Recently I have been playing the game Skyrim. I play the game with the sound off so I can listen to audiobooks. Lately I have been been listening to Ernest Becker‘s The Denial Of Death. Here’s what the Wikipedia has to say about the book.

Another theme running throughout the book is that humanity’s traditional “hero-systems” i.e. religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason; science is attempting to solve the problem of man, something that Becker feels it can never do. The book states that we need new convincing “illusions” that enable us to feel heroic in the grand scheme of things, i.e. immortal. Becker, however, does not provide any definitive answer, mainly because he believes that there is no perfect solution. Instead, he hopes that gradual realization of man’s innate motivations, namely death, can help to bring about a better world.

Hah! and here I am playing a first-person hero simulation game. Today’s convincing illusions sure are on the nose.

This is a collection of information copied from the wikipedia interspersed with some Psychedelic Photographic art pieces.

But first Here is an original poem Inspired By Salvia Divornium Followed By a Link to a Short Film

Ok let’s get up I’ll just get the over by this gotta get the
keys are over near the OK NOW i’ll just get out of this.
Wait! Ok I’m sitting here in the car and I have the lighter
and my wallet and I ‘m just gonna get my coat and I’ll be
I am I’m getting out of the
wait did I just drop
I’m getting out of the car

and here I’m getting out of the car
I’ll just be getting out of the
and there
oh here go the feet
Ah I can breath
I’m getting out of this
I can feel the other thing
coming over the top but It’s not

wait I’m getting out
I’ll just swing my way up out of the car
ah I can breath again
getting out
this is the thing isn’t it
here we go getting out
Hey look
I’m over here I’m getting out
just like you

we all get out
getting out of the car I’m
there see
there
it was
ah I can breath
I’m getting
got out
wow ah
breath deep
now they are all up
all up all over
we got out up
swung right up and popped down here
right next to this car

we all get up
swing
right next to the car see
ah what a deep breath and we swung right up

This concept may be related to a tendency for the brain to imagine living entities during certain altered states[citation needed]. The best example of this is the extremely common feeling of a living presence during sleep paralysis (which has been theorized as the origin of the succubus, as well as a common theme in many alien abduction stories). However, Terence McKenna and Dr. Rick Strassman have both asserted the sense of reality of the experience is distinct from ordinary hallucinatory experiences, leading both researchers to speculate that perhaps the physics of many worlds is involved.[1]Jacques Vallee has proposed that the entities met may be of an interdimensional nature in his interdimensional hypothesis.

James Kent has put forth a different explanation for machine elves.[3] Kent postulates that the DMT landscape is simply disrupting or “editing” our processing of visual information and causing a chaotic interpretation of it inspired by hyperactivephosphene activity. The brain may fill in the blanks and since we all have an affinity for anthropomorphic things, a humanoid entity may appear out of all this chaos. Our “imaginal workplace” will take the center stage in brain activity, allowing internal data to be interpreted as external stimuli.

When reflecting upon his mescaline experiences Aldous Huxley suggested that there was something, which he called Mind at Large, which was filtered by the ordinary functioning of the human brain to produce ordinary experience. [4]

At about minute one or two of a DMT trip, according to McKenna, one may burst through a chrysanthemum-like mandala, and find:

There’s a whole bunch of entities waiting on the other side, saying “How wonderful that you’re here! You come so rarely! We’re so delighted to see you!”

They’re like jewelled self-dribbling basketballs and there are many of them and they come pounding toward you and they will stop in front of you and vibrate, but then they do a very disconcerting thing, which is they jump into your body and then they jump back out again and the whole thing is going on in a high-speed mode where you’re being presented with thousands of details per second and you can’t get a hold on [them …] and these things are saying “Don’t give in to astonishment”, which is exactly what you want to do. You want to go nuts with how crazy this is, and they say “Don’t do that. Pay attention to what we’re doing”.

What they’re doing is making objects with their voices, singing structures into existence. They offer things to you, saying “Look at this! Look at this!” and as your attention goes towards these objects you realise that what you’re being shown is impossible. It’s not simply intricate, beautiful and hard to manufacture, it’s impossible to make these things. The nearest analogy would be the Fabergé eggs, but these things are like the toys that are scattered around the nursery inside a U.F.O., celestial toys, and the toys themselves appear to be somehow alive and can sing other objects into existence, so what’s happening is this proliferation of elf gifts, which are moving around singing, and they are saying “Do what we are doing” and they are very insistent, and they say “Do it! Do it! Do it!” and you feel like a bubble inside your body beginning to move up toward your mouth, and when it comes out it isn’t sound, it’s vision. You discover that you can pump “stuff” out of your mouth by singing, and they’re urging you to do this. They say “That’s it! That’s it! Keep doing it!”.

We’re now at minute 4.5 [of the trip] and you speak in a kind of glossolalia. There is a spontaneous outpouring of syntax unaccompanied by what is normally called “meaning”. After a minute or so of this the whole thing begins to collapse in on itself and they begin to physically move away from you. Usually their final shot is that they wave goodbye and say “Deja vu! Deja vu!”.

The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή (psyche, “mind”) and δηλείν (delein, “to manifest”), hence “mind-manifesting”, the implication being that psychedelics can access and develop unused potentials of the human mind.[1] The word was coined by Humphrey Osmond, loathed by Richard Schultes, but championed by Timothy Leary.[2]

The word psychedelic (From Ancient Greekψυχή (psychê) mind, soul + δηλος (dêlos)manifest, reveal + -ic) was coined to express the idea of a drug that makes manifest a hidden but real aspect of the mind. It is commonly applied to any drug with perception-altering effects such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, 2C-B, mescaline and DOB as well as a panoply of othertryptamines, phenethylamines and yet more exotic chemicals.

The term “psychedelic” is used interchangeably with “psychotomimetic” and “hallucinogen”,[4]thus it can refer to a large number of drugs such as classical hallucinogens (LSD, psilocybin,mescaline, etc.), entactogens (e.g. MDMA), cannabinoids and dissociative drugs (e.g.ketamine). The classical hallucinogens are considered to be the representative psychedelics and LSD is generally considered the prototypical psychedelic.[4] In order to refer to the LSD-like psychedelics, scientific authors have used the term “classical hallucinogen” in the sense defined by Glennon (1999): “The classical hallucinogens are agents that meet Hollister’s original definition, but are also agents that: (a) bind at 5-HT2 serotonin receptors, and (b) are recognized by animals trained to discriminate 1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-methylphenyl)-2-aminopropane (DOM) from vehicle.[5] Otherwise, when the term “psychedelic” is used to refer only to the LSD-like psychedelics (a.k.a. the classical hallucinogens), authors explicitly point that they intend “psychedelic” to be understood according to this more restrictive interpretation (e.g. see Nichols, 2004).[6]

One explanatory model for the experiences provoked by hallucinogens is the “reducing valve” concept, first articulated inAldous Huxley‘s book The Doors of Perception.[7] In this view, the drugs disable the brain’s “filtering” ability to selectively prevent certain perceptions, emotions, memories and thoughts from ever reaching the conscious mind. This effect has been described as mind expanding, or consciousness expanding, for the drug “expands” the realm of experience available to conscious awareness.[citation needed]

Psychedelic effects can vary depending on the precise drug and dosage, as well as the set and setting. “Trips” range between the short but intense effects of intravenous DMT to the protracted ibogaine experience, which can last for days. Appropriate dosage ranges from extremely low (LSD) to rather high (mescaline). Some drugs, like the auditory hallucinogenDiPT, act specifically to distort a single sense, and others have more diffuse effects on cognition generally. Some are more conducive to solitary experiences, while others are positively empathogenic.

Though the natural drugs have a long history of use and usually have an extensive study profile aside from the mortality rates of the drugs, in recent times there has been large production of hundreds of virtually unstudied psychedelics (JWH-018, CP 47,497, DPT, TFMPP, 2C-T-7, 2C-H, Methylone, N-Methyl-N-isopropyltryptamine (MIPT), and AL-LAD to name a few) that may be potentially harmful. This is especially the case with the designer drugs in the psychedelic-amphetamine class. Because of this factor, one should not make the generalization that all psychedelics can not be potentially harmful at normal doses.

Hallucinogenic substances are among the oldest drugs used by human kind, as hallucinogenic substances naturally occur inmushrooms, cacti and a variety of other plants. Numerous cultures worldwide have endorsed the use of hallucinogens in medicine, religion and recreation, to varying extents, while some cultures have regulated or outright prohibited their use. In most developed countries today, the possession of many hallucinogens, even those found commonly in nature, is considered a crime punishable by fines, imprisonment or even death. In some countries, such as the United States and theNetherlands, partial deference may be granted to traditional religious use by members of indigenous ethnic minorities such as the Native American Church and the Santo Daime Church. Recently the União do Vegetal, a Christian-based religious sect whose composition is not primarily ethnicity-based, won a United States Supreme Court decision authorizing its use ofayahuasca.

Tiny little voices are soft I can hardly hear them when I am doing something. That goes double for my own voice. Being an easily influenced personality I have found myself needing to isolate when I am not on the computer. I sit here in the back yard in a little tool shack watching the sunset develop presently. The neighbors are right on the other side of this wooden shed that shares the fence as a wall. They have been outside all day off and on. Sometimes they ride double on this tiny little minibike- a relatively large bodied person i surrounding a still fairly wide eyed tot. The bike goes around me all the way. I can’t see it from here. They take it to the side walk and ride it around our house which is on the corner. The sidewalk is a bit slanted in front of our house and there is a place where the concrete sits up a couple of inches. I imagine the bike must jump a bit off of that. Wow and there they would be set against that sunset in front of that huge tree.
Like a postcard or my own little commercial in super HD. How much would that cost.
But hell I’d have to get up to see that and it’s kinda nice here in the shade.

I’m listening to this recording of Beckett’sMolloy on some headphones but its soft enough for the trains to drown it out.

So much going on out here. Sometime I can and feel the subwoofer when the nieghbour turn up their “rap” music. I assume that’s what it is. It’s got this weird bass-line but then there is already much too much isn’t there.
Isn’t it terribly concentrated and overlapping this place we are in.
I got neighbors and roads and wires and pipes and houses all over this place. They surround me. The cars drive around me within one to a hundred feet. The planes pass overhead Supersonic Jets boom and biplanes and helicopters range in volume but occasionly the are even louder then our barking dogs. One of which has a skin condition and mewls and yaps for long stretches as it spins its infected hindquarters into the sharp driveway gravel until there is a bare spot of dirt whose radius does eventually stabilize.
Oh and no one knows anyone.
Or to be more precise I know no one.
I really haven’t made any effort to converse with anyone and unlike someone alone and silent in a big city A.A. meeting here you get to be left alone or never the less are left alone whatever your feelings.

But really that is an inherited condition. I am really just extremely afraid of people. This doesn’t stop me from communicating online occasionally as long as there is no reason to do so.

When I get old will I have to wear purple to get peoples attention? Will I have to have money?
Perhaps it’s already like that. Here I am alone in a room with a computer. I’m not communicating with anyone accept Mary. Do people actually ever talk to each other anymore. Does anyone listen. Why should someone listen to you tell them all the pain their in unless your getting paid or laid for your time?
I just watched the film Schenectady, New York and it made be cry. All people are lonely and grasping and destined to die. No one can be who they are or anyone else. The closeness you feel is imaginary- No that’s not it.
What is it?
I am afraid of talking to people and I feel like a failure. In the film the main character gets a MacArthur genius grant so he can do whatever he wants without worrying about whether their is an audience. He uses the money to build a replica of the city he lives in and he hires actors to perform as all the major characters in his life himself included. Of course it’s not him he sees as him it’s another person acting like him but then the actor of that character in the film(Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is perhaps playing the part of the director and writer. None of this matters really except he gets to portray a character from a lot of different angles. The character is all of us and you end up feeling like you’ve just read some french existentialist who can really talk to you. It’s a sad and intractable position to be a human.

Why do i feel i need to define things and think about them properly and sort them out on paper or express them in art. Where does that get you? what do you read after you’ve read Dosteoevsky? A book written without using the letter E? or perhaps one where the main character has no interior life.

In the end isn’t the message of all great writers that one must write. What does that mean? Perhaps writing a real book requires one to psychoanalysis themselves. So in the end they can come to the well thought out and personally experienced realization that we are all going to die alone.